How do you lot feel about Pay or say OK to ads model, asks ICO The UK's Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) has opened a consultation on "consent or pay" business models. We're sure readers of The Register will have a fair few things to say. "Consent or Pay" models are where customers are encouraged to part with cash in return for services that don't involve their data being used for …
So the recent story about TC Strings and the real-time auction for ads based on my personal infomation got me thinking. An auction is usually an arrangement between a seller and a buyer. I consign something to auction, someone buys it and the auctioneers take a fee. The TC Strings show that model is kinda broken. It's my data, but the auctioneers don't pay me anything. A transaction model obviously exists, it's just the seller is cut out of the loop.
So maybe Pay or Say OK could work. It just needs ad slingers and data harvesters to pay us for using our personal data. Sure, the price per indvidual transaction might be a small fraction of a penny, but given the number of trackers and harvesting transactions, it could quickly add up to a few beer tokens. Or just a way to compensate us for the current theft of both resources and privacy.
Here's a pile of very genuine high quality personal data and i'll even give you a picture of me. Now pay up!
Not every problem can be solved by inventing a new market. Just look at Ofgem. As soon as you invent an artificial market, someone works out how to defraud it.
What I'd rather see, is a general ban on targeted advertising, data brokers etc. Not opt in or opt out, just Out. If that means a few Trillion is wiped off the NASDAQ, so be it.
They said "a general ban on targeted advertising" not a ban on any advertising
If that means advertising will be less effective then my response is "Oh dear, what a pity, never mind"
I'd argue that targeted advertising can still be allowed but ONLY if the target is the nature of the website\specific page being viewed with absolutely zero knowledge* about the viewer being needed or used
*except perhaps some very approximate geographical stuff as there's no point running ads for, say, an Australian product if the viewer is in Europe but happens to be looking at the Australian based website
CPM? I had to look up that piece of marketing BS-Bingo
I don't really give a toss about their costs. What irks me is that different people see different versions of webpages and search results depending on who some data-broker thinks they are. That's what enables social manipulation.
Of course, social manipulation is ultimately what all Advertising boils down to, but at least with untargeted advertising it has to be done in the clear, where people can call out propaganda and abuse. Whereas targeted advertising allows abusive marketing practices to be done surreptitiously.
Yeah, because white middle-aged males like you are being discriminated against. By not being allowed to view ads for “SKKN by Kim” makeup. It’s suddenly hit me: a weave is what you’ve always wanted, *normally* used by Afro-Caribbeans but who are we to say. And you just don’t know where in the local area to get one. They’re hiding it from you, it’s a global conspiracy to prevent you getting a weave and nail extensions.
Well, like most on this forum, you are confusing targeted advertising (which is all advertising), with what is called in the industry *native* advertising, which is the ads shown on unrelated websites/blogs/forums etc. It’s *native* that everyone here hates, because it’s all they happen to come into contact with, but it only forms about 5% of online ad spend. It costs almost nothing to run native ads, because they are known to be remarkably ineffective. Precisely *because* the targeting is so poor (even *with* the tracking), the volume has to be vast.
None of this has anything to do with the vast bulk of ads, on Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, MailMetro, Bing. Those targeted ads run *on their own platform and their own website*. If you don’t go to their website, you don’t see their ads. At all. Instagram running targeted ads is no different to ITV running ads on TV. If you don’t want to see ads served by ITV, don’t watch ITV.
And yet the EU Commission want to tell them what to do on their own website. That’s the problem.
Targeted “based on the content of the show and typical demographic of the viewer.”
Exactly as targeted internet ads are. The difference is that many (really all) relevant modern web platforms have dynamic content, not static. Eg an Instagram feed, there’s simply no equivalent of a static channel with a given viewership. It’s all dynamically generated targeted based on assessment of the individualised preferences. Even the non-ads.
Instagram literally *is* targeted, some of the posts being ads. That’s how it is defined. Asking for ads to be non-targeted on Instagram doesn’t parse as a grammatical statement, it’s a type mismatch error.
That’s what Instagram is. Don’t like it, nobody is forcing you to use it. But legislating against their core product, that other people do want to use, is just nuts.
Thank god for the PVR and the skip forward control.
As for online ads... I block them almost totally. The few that get through are quickly blacklisted.
I hate all forms of advertising. Sorry El Reg,, even here. Your ad slinging keeps changing so I block the lot.
If... and only if, I decide I want something then I'll research it myself using anonymous tools, a VM (that is overwritten afterwards) and a VPN.
Why? I spent 3+ years working in the Ad slinging world and that was more than enough to turn me off ads for ever.
“Except perhaps some very approximate geographical stuff as there's no point running ads for, say, an Australian product if the viewer is in Europe but happens to be looking at the Australian based website”
Indeed. And of course gender. Because there’s no point in serving ads for tampons to men. Plus, of course, age. Because it’s actually illegal to serve ads for gambling or alcohol to under-18s. And while you’re at it, not very sensible to target ads for holidays for a company literally called 18-30 to 65 year olds.
Paying 30p per click, how long do you think it is possibly to stay in business blanket-advertising tampons to 65year old men?
Indeed. And of course gender. Because there’s no point in serving ads for tampons to men.
Sure there is. There's a vid on YT with someone having a meltdown because supermarket didn't have male tampons. Shop assistant seemed quite puzzled by the demands for tampons marketed for men and in masculine colored packaging. Blue is for boys, pink is for girls and ISTR Tampax coming in blue boxes. But the 21st century is weird like that.
Paying 30p per click, how long do you think it is possibly to stay in business blanket-advertising tampons to 65year old men?
Just do what I do when I'm bored. Click on the ads for anything obviously pointless like that. It'll cost the advertiser, and probably eat into the number of ads allocated so the campaign will probably run out faster. Just do it from an anomyised account or the ad flingers will view it as an expression of interest.
The Reg is a useful service. Facebook/twatter/ubend less-so
If the Reg were to embed some non-intrusive ads hosted by their own server that I could be sure weren't slurping my data to some ad-slinger company then I wouldn't block them. But as long as Javascript and cross-domain slurping is going on, i'm not having it.
Frankly I'd like to see the likes of Google, Meta and Microsoft broken up. If Google were to disappear off the face of the earth tomorrow, the only part of it that I would miss is GMail - their search is rubbish these days and AOSP would become so much better if Google died. But even GMail I use less and less these days. Youtube is a increasingly a cess-pool to compete with TikTok. The only part of Microsoft I'd miss is GitHub (which they shouldn't have been allowed to pillage in the first place) the rest of it (LinkedIn, Windows, Office, OpenAI etc) can be incinerated. Meta, I'd only miss WhatsApp (which again, they shouldn't have been allowed to buy) TikTok, X, amazon, Apple*.. I wouldn't miss these at all.
* Of course, some people would miss Apple a lot. There would need to be some kind of fanboi rehabilitation programme
“Frankly I'd like to see the likes of Google, Meta and Microsoft broken up. “
Sites that you claim not to use, and therefore have no impact on your life….you want government to forcibly intervene and shut down? Even though the vast majority of the population, do use them, and find them valuable?
Not true, you get to use their service free of charge. You are paid "in kind" rather than receiving direct financial return. It's still payment.
Not always, eg Amazon's decision to slap ads into a service people were already paying for. Or services being paid for by advertisers, but that model seems to be increasingly broken. Advertisers are beginning to realise the claims around targetted advertising don't really work in reality. But the problem is still people using my services and personal data free of charge.
Best solution would be to just make cyberstalking and data rape illegal, so back to the basic principles of consent, and minimum personal information necessary. But the ad slingers and brokers absolutely hate that idea, and as another commentor put it, the current model is akin to pay and we won't rape you, or don't pay and you're consenting.
Please stop using the offensive reference to rape. It isn't applicable, in any way. When it comes to these services there is always a choice. If you don't like what a supplier of any service does, then don't use it. It is entirely within your choice to decide to use Amazon or not, unlike rape, where there is no choice.
Where on the page is the *ucking ToS? Its at the f*cking bottom of the fu*king page, which, even if its displayed first, slips fuc*ing downward as more bullshit is downloaded to fill the page above it. By the time you've read and agreed to the ToS, its too late. In fact, by the time the ToS opens to your click, its too late.
Where on the page is the *ucking ToS? Its at the f*cking bottom of the fu*king page, which, even if its displayed first, slips fuc*ing downward as more bullshit is downloaded to fill the page above it
Or the bottom of the page is blocked by the 'consent' popup. Even if your browser isn't supposed to display pop-ups. Hello Bbc. Why do you keep demanding I create an account and login? Why, despite an element telling me you use cookies, and asking me to consent does it create cookies anyway?
Please stop using the offensive reference to rape. It isn't applicable, in any way.
Nope. And sure it is. In fact there are a bunch of analogous activities that are already criminal. Rape is obviously a gross invasion of privacy and lack of consent. But maybe I just follow you around. Then I could be charged with stalking. If I follow you around online, that's cyberstalking-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberstalking
If I hang around outside your house, that could be voyeurism. If I watch or listen to you via devices in your home, that is voyeurism. If I rummage through your underwear draw, that could be several offences, but I wouldn't need to because I know the style, color and size of all the clothing you've bought online. And if you have children, I'd know everything about them as well. Children can't give consent. So sure, some personal information may be 'strictly necessary', ie I've sold you your panties. But sharing those details is totally unnecessary.
So I don't understand why data rapists think they have an exemption to the gross invasions of privacy they conduct. Especially as their data rape also leads to other crimes, like if they leak that data. But fear not, there are also expensive services that claim to protect your identity online, or help if your ID has been stolen. Some sharing of personal information might be necessary. So services like banking and insurance share information to prevent frauds. Their apps and websites do not need to know what websites I visit however, or sell that data.
So we don't really need new laws, just to apply ones that already exist. Charge Apple, FacePalm and AlphaGoo under cyberstalking legislation, throw them in jail and do the same for the big data aggregators and wholesalers. Then, execs may, just may take the hint that data rape is not OK.
"We have seen an almost 80% success rate in effecting change from the 53 organisations we wrote to last year"
One a week contacted, with one fifth failing to co-operate. Well done, seeing that almost every commercial web site (pretty much regardless of scale) abuses user privacy, not only specifically by cookies but by scripted snooping tools that are typically not affected by "cookie banner" choices.
What's needed is a statutory opt in policy. It's really disappointing that this hasn't yet registered, despite Ofcom establishing in 2019 that "[...] only 15% of respondents were happy for online companies to collect and use their data to show more relevant adverts or information. Further, research conducted by Ofcom, the ICO and Which? all showed that the more consumers understood about how targeted advertising works, the more concerned they became about it, and began to feel less in control of their data and that, in addition, consumers can become less willing to receive personalised advertising" *
I suspect there are too many powerful vested interests for statutory opt in to be implemented. However it remains to be seen whether the targeted advert bubble will burst at some point. There are numerous studies indicating that user profile-based targeting doesn't really work for either web users or sellers, the primary beneficiaries being the brokers. It's with luck a just a matter of time before this becomes sufficiently known to drive reversion to page content oriented advertising (which does work and avoids the 'need' for user profiling).
* Competition & Markets Authority Online platforms and digital advertising Market study interim report 2019
.
Would a statutory opt in policy require a popup on every web page asking if I opted in? Every page just in case I changed my mind in the last 5 seconds?
If it comes about I just hope the "I don't care about cookies" man is still alive and well and working on an extension to click the popup for me because I'm either lazy or would end up throwing the laptop at the nearest brick wall.
I smell an attempt to move away from GDPR. This should be a non-argument. If you are collecting data you need to be completely transparent and obtain consent. If it's a paid for service you still need consent. Creating free tier to remove consent is just gaming the system because hardly anyone is going to pay for something you can have for free and they know it. I block ads and as much tracking as I can anyway but that's their own fault for taking the piss with them. The odd ad here and there wouldn't bother me to be honest but it never is.
The proposed DPDI bill already aims to nobble cookie banners, the ICO is singing from the same hymn sheet, and it looks like they're is sounding out whether or not the Government can go a little further.
The DPDI Bill aims to nobble practically every data subject protection except those relating to direct material losses resulting from data breaches. It remains to be seen whether the result will pass European scrutiny for "adequacy" but it's very likely that will be a political decision. The fundamental that the GDPR is human rights law, not just data law has proved so inconvenient to big business that almost everyone has been bending over backwards to circumvent its provisions ever since 2018.
Oh, and by the way, the GDPR is silent on 'cookie banners' (and indeed on 'cookies'). The relevant UK legislation is the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, implementing European Directive 2002/58/EC. It relates to cookies and other tracking devices (a fact that's usually ignored) but 'cookie banners' are purely an invention of those attempting to circumvent the legislation, in that, as implemented, they're the most annoying possible way to 'seek consent', in the obvious hope that most folks will just click through.
"Oh, and by the way, the GDPR is silent on 'cookie banners' (and indeed on 'cookies'). The relevant UK legislation is the Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, implementing European Directive 2002/58/EC. It relates to cookies and other tracking devices (a fact that's usually ignored) but 'cookie banners' are purely an invention of those attempting to circumvent the legislation, in that, as implemented, they're the most annoying possible way to 'seek consent', in the obvious hope that most folks will just click through."
You nailed it with that. All these people complaining about cookie banners/pop-ups never seem to understand that most important bit. It's marketers being as obnoxious as possible to turn the users against the little protection they have. See, for example, the number of sites still using a single opt-in "click to accept all" and literally 100's of opt-outs you need to click one at a time to opt out of each "partner".
> The DPDI Bill aims to nobble practically every data subject protection except those relating to direct material losses resulting from data breaches. It remains to be seen whether the result will pass European scrutiny for "adequacy" but it's very likely that will be a political decision. The fundamental that the GDPR is human rights law, not just data law has proved so inconvenient to big business that almost everyone has been bending over backwards to circumvent its provisions ever since 2018.
Well in light of https://nihrc.org/publication/detail/nihrc-briefing-on-the-data-protection-and-digital-information-bill it is going to be "interesting":
"that, as a fundamental right, the right to personal data protection would fall within the scope of “civil rights” under the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement. Further, as an essential element of the right to respect for private and family life in Article 8 ECHR, any right to personal data protection afforded by EU law, by which the UK was bound on 31 December 2020, falls within the scope of the non-diminution commitment in Windsor Framework Article 2."
How will the UK government (and businesses) cope with the requirement to keep pre-Brexit data protection rights for people in Northern Ireland yet introduce data protection rights changes in England, Scotland, and Wales?
"I smell an attempt to move away from GDPR."
France already does this - consent to potentially being tracked by hundreds of partners or cough up some coins. There's no such thing as the ability to say "don't track me" so I don't know what tortuous logic deems this as acceptable within the existing cookie legislation - being coerced to accept or pay is not freely given consent. It's barely better than asking for protection money (and I say barely better as knowing how scummy the online advertising industry is, I absolutely don't trust them to be tracking you anyway, because they can).
The thing is, in most cases I wouldn't particularly have any problem with the site I'm visiting dropping cookies on my machine, it's those fucking hundreds of parasites that come along for the ride. A pox on all their houses.
@Mark #255 Thanks for letting us know. I suspected as much but it's good to be informed that it's probably a waste of time.
Up to last year, free form submissions on such issues were invited, but this seems to be changing, finally confirming that the decisions have effectively already been made. That said, having submitted extensively as a data protection professional to successive consultations on data protection over several years right up to Parliamentary committee level, I can categorically state that there's zero evidence that any of my comments or suggestions have ever been considered. So it probably doesn't really matter how responses are invited as they're destined to be ignored anyway.
Data subject rights are obviously considered a drag on business, so they must be eviscerated while maintaining a facade of 'taking them seriously' and doing the minimum to keep the EU satisfied.
I would agree if Facebook, Twitter and the like were the informal noticeboards and poncey IRC they started off as. Problem now is that they are embedded in all sorts of places. Some companies have no way to contact them for help or support outside of social media. Shit - there are hotels where Whatsapp is required to get in touch with room service or reception and I've had clients who wanted me to use Whatsapp instead of phone, text, email and, probably, just fuckihg talking to each other face to face.
The do realise and they don't care for two reasons. Firstly the hit rate can be very very low for them to be able to appear successful. Secondly, and more importantly, their customers don't really know how successful their ads are. The main thing they think they know is that to stop advertising would be a disaster. There's a pair of Freakonomics podcast about it (Does Advertising Actually Work) which are worth a listen to.
Spoiler: the answer to the question, according to Freakonomics, is along the lines of "not nearly as well as you'd like it to".
"The do realise and they don't care for two reasons. Firstly the hit rate can be very very low for them to be able to appear successful. Secondly, and more importantly, their customers don't really know how successful their ads are."
When I write advertisers I mean advertisers, not the advertising industry. The advertising industry behaves in the way you say. The advertisers are those you refer to as their customers.
The advertising industry only sells advertising (and add-on services) to advertisers. The tracking exists solely to be charged for as one of those add-on extras.
Doesn't matter - my points are valid for both advertisers and agencies. The drive and gutter cleaning bloke who pays (probably less than) minimum wage to leaflet my estate only has to get a couple of hits out of a few hundred leaflets make it worth his while. Same goes for web advertisers, except the ratios can be even smaller and be "successful". It's the same reason that people hunt game with a shotgun - they'd never hit a grouse with an 22 rifle.
The advertisers (the people paying to advertise their stuff) have no controlled measures for what their advertising is worth because they are terrified of not advertising. If you listen to the Freakonomics podcast I reference above or below they cover this, with sales increases overestimated by orders of magnitude and one company forgetting to place half it's newspaper advertising budget and not noticing any sales impact at all.
although, your choice of using meta (and other ad-based services) already restrict your chances, e.g. certain jobs are only available through those 'social media, or any other sites that hover your data AND feed you ads. So if you don't agree to that, well, THIS job is not for you. And THAT job, and that one too.
Individual agents of several otherwise entirely reputable agencies frequently refuse to interact with candidates (i.e. go silent) unless they can do it on linkedin. Agencies love these asocial media platforms because it eliminates the need to contact candidates individually until a decision has been made. After all, what's wanted is least effort for the commission, which is essentially the same motivation in principle that drives folks to post their content on goooooooogle's Blogger.com instead of setting up their own blog independently, and the same motivation that makes Blogger the place to go to view a blog rather than taking the trouble to search for an independent one. All round, it's unwillingness to make more than a minimal effort for the reward (an intrinsic and perfectly understandable human characteristic).
Despite what many are commenting, it is a difficult situation. To blindly say "Pay or Ok" should be banned is ridiculous.
I'm rabidly anti-tracking and certainly not in favour of giving big tech free-reign. All choices should be clear and transparent. However, someone has to pay somewhere, unless you consider the likes of Facebook to be public services that should be publically funded...? So, either the user pays up front, for which absolutely no data should be shared with anyone else, or they get a "free" service supported by ads. And advertisers, rightly or wrongly, want to target ads.
No one has an automatic right to use someone else's property and that includes the likes of Facebook. They should be made to be absolutely open and transparent, and to not give 3rd parties access to data unless that is explicitly agreed to and confirmed, say, annually by the user. But Facebook belongs to Meta. If you want to use it then you have to either pay or agree to their terms and conditions.
So yes, regulators should enforce openness and transparency but, ultimately, if users want to use a service then they can either pay or agree to Ts&Cs. If they don't read those, and the information is presented in a readily accessible format, then that's the user's problem.
The site gets paid anyway, whenever someone clicks on an ad. Apparently, they also want to be paid whether you intend to or not. Does this suggest that the site revenue from ads is no longer sufficient? And might this further suggest that the "targeted advert" con is becoming threadbare? There have been quite a few rigorous studies suggesting that the primary beneficiaries of targeted advert broking are the brokers, not the advertisers, the platforms or the users, and this is supported by a lot of anecdote about the uselessness of the ads that turn up ("just bought a bed, so I'm inundated with bed adverts" etc.).
Targeted ads are, indeed, unnecessary nonsense but if that's the model a private company goes with then you either choose to use that supplier's product (the social media site) or you don't. Alternatively, you use it and take steps to protect your data. I use minimal, false details, layers of throw-away email addresses, don't provide phone numbers, use a VPN, use a privacy focused browser and ad blockers. Any site that refuses me access due to the use of the ad-blocker, that's fair enough and I respect that. I leave and find whatever I'm looking for elsewhere.
I've agreed with you - that should be the case if the choice was genuinely between "pay for ad-free and tracking free" and "accept ads and tracking". What Faaecesborg have done is very deliberately conflated the two - so you can pay to get rid of the ads but they'll still do all the privacy invading and creepy data mining - and that is what needs to be stamped on very hard.
Unfortunately for Faecesborg, they've burned all their bridges and dug up the approach roads as far as I'm concerned. They've built a business which depends on ignoring the law, been caught repeatedly breaking it, repeatedly allowing others to break it, lied about it - so even if they offered a genuine "if you pay we won't do any of the data scraping" option we could not trust them not to do it behind our backs anyway and lie about it.
There should be a legal requirement for advertisements to be cleanly separable from editorial content, such that the client end can always remove adverts.
My screen, my rules.
If you show me an advertisement, not only am I never, ever going to buy anything from you; but I will recommend to my friends, family and anyone who will listen not to buy anything from you.
People don't pay for content with their eyeballs. You know full well the rubbery linkages between the people who do pay (advertisers), who they pay (Google, mostly), and how Google pay a fraction of that to websites. Everybody in the chain knows that the majority of adverts are ignored, how is it different to actively ignore or block and advert, compared to passively ignoring it?
"Everybody in the chain knows that the majority of adverts are ignored"
Knows? Believes, or hopes might be appropriate.
What they don't want to acknowledge is adverts might provoke a negative reaction. The advertising industry will hope the advertisers don't catch on to this. The advertisers are largely professional narcissists and probably unable to believe that this could happen to them, even if it's their reaction to other company's adverts.
"My screen, my rules."
That is not how anything works. Their site, their rules. The one who is taking the step to unite them is you: you are visiting their site and displaying its content on your screen, not the other way around. I fully believe you should have the right to block anything you want to not appear on your screen, but not that you should have the legal right for that to always be easy. There is no privacy reason why you should never see an advertisement; how much you see them has no connection to how much tracking the site did to pick which ones to show you. Your desire not to be annoyed is not something that is or should be codified in law with the same vehemence that the right to privacy should be.
That is absolutely your right, as is trying to block their adverts from your sight. When, for example, advertisers try to ban ad blockers legally, I have a similar problem with the request.
My problem is with those who think that there should be some legal requirement to let them have any service without ads, just because they don't like ads. It's unrealistic, would not work if they got it, and it risks painting real privacy concerns as no more important than wanting something for free. When I'm explaining privacy, I already have to make it clear why my concerns are realistic. It is a similar problem I have had when trying to explain why technologies like DRM are harmful. I raise objections to compatibility or the ability for a customer to use what they've purchased, but if I have people arguing for the same thing whose opinion appears to be that anything digital should be free at all times, it makes it harder for me to make those points and less likely that either group will get what they want.
I sort of agree, but it's the service providers who have created the "everything should be free" mindset by giving their product away to us on the assumption that we'll continue to provide our valuable data for nothing. That implicit contract was never made clear when we signed up and now the likes of Facebook are seriously at risk of being hoist by their own petard because their services aren't valuable enough for most of us users to pay for them and if governments decide that privacy trumps profit then they could be fucked.........
.......except that most people - not denizens of the Register's boards - just put up with ads and don't give a toss about their privacy. I had to spend Christmas with members of the family aged 17 to 80 tapping away at their phones with a loud, audio-accompanied advert shouting out every half-hour or so because someone clicked on it. It wound the fuck out of me but no one else seemed to be that bothered about it.
Before Twitter and the rest there was Usenet. There still is. In fact I use it and, indirectly, pay for it in that my ISP bundles as art of my subscription. t with previous ISPs that didn't do that I've used paid for servers.
I suspect that if the likes of X or Facebook wanted to run subscriptions it would be much more expensive but that would be between them and their subscribers. It might well give people reason to restrict the number of services they use.
As they don't need to track you in order to display adds, this should be a non-issue. Consent to tracking should therefor be at your discretion (as per existing law), and if you want targeted ads: Why not ask the user what type of ad they'd want to see?
That they get paid to show adds regardless makes this claim for targeted adds suspect. That targeted ads don't equate to more conversions (people clicking the ad and purchasing the services), and that general ads can be more beneficial to the users (hey, didn't know about this thing... and I've already bought that other thing they keep pushing ads for... ) just adds to the doubt on the claimed reasons for why they need to track users for advertising.
That they can use this required consent to justify them selling your data: That's a significant issue. And yes, read the T's and C's and notice they often 'share with partners': Aka those who have paid them to collect your data. Yes, I do spend time reading T's and C's (I am that bored at times) and noticed how with some consent pages there's 'Legitimate interest (41* vendors)'!!! Seriously? How are 41 vendors claiming legitimate interest exceptions to consent for use of a site?
*Yes, I did notice some sites list the number of vendors they're claiming have legitimate interest. The highest I noted was, indeed, 41. If only they'd found one more vendor they could claim had legitimate interest... just one more... that would really be telling.
The most effective tracking would be the non-advertising content of the page or the search terms taken to get to it. If I wish to buy a washing machine I might research washing machines and their prices online. If I stop doing that it's because I've made my choice - which includes deciding not to buy one and there's no point in showing me ads for them. Showing ads in those circumstances is fraud against those paying to have them shown.
It is about time people woke up to the price paid for the manipulation of their eyeballs. I think a lot of people will be shocked to see how much their identity has been monetized.
Imagine the permutations this could have... Let's say a user is financially well-off. As a target for advertisers, their advertising investment has a greater pay-off potential than if the ad appears for a broke person. Will Facebook charge more for advertising to that user? Do they do it already?
And therefore... Will Facebook charge rich people more to opt-out of advertisements versus poor people?
Even better.... It is logical people who can afford to pay for an opt-out will do so more often than those who cannot afford it. Therefore, Facebook advertisements will be primarily targeted at people without money. Does that lead to where Facebook is unable to sell advertisements? Sure millions of eyeballs saw the advertisement and want to buy, but if they are broke in the first place...
Yeah, this is going to be fun!
I find myself over the last 2 years using less and less web resources. Pay wall, meh I don't need the news that much. Give away my data, nah, don't want to see the video that much.
All my data has been leaked a gazillion times over, I'm over it. Getting tired of the game of give this to see/read that. There are far better things I can do with my time than piss over a paywall or giving up my data. While The Register is free, I will read here. if a pay wall goes up,,, I wish them well and thanks for the free days. I will be outside, which is a good thing, and I should do more of.
The ICO appears to be deliberately confusing advertising and tracking.
There really need to be three choices, not two: 1) Do not allow tracking and provide the service without ads; 2) Allow the service to track personal information and display personalised ads; 3) Do not allow tracking and display unpersonalised ads.
Some people will pay for Option 1. Some people will value the service enough to choose Option 2 - in most cases only if the service is then free. Option 3 must be explicitly listed, and if the site doesn't want to provide service on that basis they must tell people who choose that option that that is the case.
I strongly suspect that if that happened, many people would walk away from the service. If I am wrong then FB etc can be happy. But the ICO must insist that user's need to be reminded that Option 3 exists, even if it leads to denial of service. In practice, I think that sites would choose to offer some level of service even with Option 3 (for example, receive messages only, or follow no more than 3 people or something).
I'm with you except for one thing:
Make option 2 illegal. Websites do not have a "legitimate interest" in selling my data to advertisers. Period. Perhaps an exception can be made for sites that really do need your personal information for ACTUAL legitimate reasons, and then use that WITHOUT sending it to anyone else to target ads.
Talk about overreach! Facebook should be able to price access at a thousand pounds a year if they want, and if the consequence is that it pisses people off and they lose a lot of users in the UK then that's their fault.
What's next, regulating how much Apple can charge for an iPhone or what Netflix can charge for a monthly subscription?
The rest of it like requiring an easy way to change your mind etc. makes perfect sense, but the fee regulation really sticks out as crazy to me.
Actually, as per my previous comment, it would not be legal to make the choice "£1000/yr or suffer all the creepiness". That would mean any consent was not freely given as £1000/yr would amount to coercion.
When you get down to lower figures, then it gets more difficult. E.g., would £20/yr be "reasonable" - i.e. would that be a reasonable figure to compensate FB for their loss of revenue from the creepy stuff ? I'd say it's still "probably" too high, but it's not obviously an indefensible figure.
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